


Etched in Skin and Bone

by Havoka



Series: Lovers' Requiem [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Vampire AU, takes place in 11th century Ireland
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-26
Updated: 2018-02-26
Packaged: 2019-03-24 12:20:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13811073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Havoka/pseuds/Havoka
Summary: Gérard was dead. Amélie often wished she was, too.Standalone prequel to Pretty People Never Lie, Vampires Never Die.





	Etched in Skin and Bone

In the dark bedroom something was stirring. It wasn’t Gérard, with his warm, peaceful breaths. It also wasn’t the breath of Gérard’s wife – she had drawn her last several hours ago.

It was a monster.

Gérard had no time to scream – his breath was stolen from his throat before he could do anything but open his eyes. Blood erupted from the severed veins in his neck. Amélie latched on with desperation and sucked it down. The blood empowered her, giving her an even greater hold on her struggling husband. Blood loss and shock quickly told hold within the poor boy. His eyes glazed over and his fingers, weakly clutching at Amélie’s arm, twitched, then gradually released their hold as they slipped off of her.

Feeding returned Amélie’s senses to her. Sputtering, she leaped back on the bed. “Gérard!” As she cried his name blood dribbled from her mouth, sinking into their newlywed white bedsheets. “Gérard…no…”

Her claws shredded clean through the blankets. Tears mingled with the blood on her face. Gérard was dead. He was dead, and it was all her fault. She was a monster. A monster…

“Nightmares again?”

Her dream was cut short by a voice. Amélie opened her tired eyes to find, looming above her, a woman. Her eyes, one blue, one red, glowed in the darkness, fixated directly on Amélie.

Her sire and reluctant caretaker.

Moira.

Amélie retreated under the blanket and drew it up to her chin. “I am sorry, Mademoiselle. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“Mm, that’s what you say _every_ night.” Moira sat down on the side of her bed. Her bony icicle fingers reached out and cupped the side of Amélie’s face. Amélie turned away from her. “You really need to get over this, LaCroix. I shouldn’t have to be consoling a grown woman every night.”

Amélie retreated from her once again. “I am only thirteen,” she mumbled.

“You were old enough to be married. That’s too old to be babied by the woman kind enough to let you live with her for nothing.”

Amélie did not look at her. There was nothing else to be said. It was the same as always.

“You need to sleep,” Moira continued, rising up from the bed. “Tomorrow is a big night.”

“I know, Mademoiselle. I will try to get some rest.”

“Good girl.” Moira patted her too hard on the shoulder. “No more nightmares. Goodnight.”

Amélie did not turn over until she heard the door close and lock behind her sire. Burying herself in her overstuffed pillow and too many blankets, she attempted to sleep, but as always, all she could see was blood.

* * *

 

That evening Moira lingered behind Amélie as Amélie carefully made herself up. She would not be easily seen in the dark, but that wasn’t why she wished to mask the deadness of her skin and the gauntness of her face.

She herself hated looking at it.

It was a foolish myth that vampires could not see themselves reflected in mirrors. Amélie wished it were true. She could easily go the rest of her un-life without seeing herself again.

“Are you finished?” Moira lurked over her shoulder. “I’m tempted to leave without you.”

Moira was a strange woman – she did not seem to care one bit about her physical appearance. Her style of dress was in fact quite mannish and most unflattering. She had never married, a fact Amélie was not surprised by. The thought of a man taking Moira as his wife seemed utterly wrong somehow.

Occasionally an urge to treat the old vampiress as a stand-in for her mother overtook young Amélie. Without thinking, as she would have asked of her mother, she said, “Do I look all right?”

The mistake was immediately apparent. “Who cares how you look?” Moira took her by the arm and all but yanked her from her dresser. “Vanity is a sign of having nothing else worthwhile to contribute to this world.”

Amélie did not respond. She allowed Moira to drag her toward the door, those hideous nails of hers sinking into the flesh of Amélie’s wrist as she did so.

“We’re going to be guising anyway,” Moira added. “I know you don’t know the first thing about this holiday, but please at least _pretend_ you aren’t completely uncultured.”

“I _am_ cultured,” Amélie muttered. “Just not in weird Irish holidays.”

They hadn’t been out amongst humans for many moons. The Samhain celebration was something Moira apparently looked forward to, in part because it was a night in which vampires could walk freely among humans and mingle as mortals. Amélie knew very little about the holiday. Spending all of one’s nights locked away in a manor was hardly conducive to learning much about local culture.

“What are we celebrating, anyway?” she asked as Moira led her down the stone-laden path that connected the manor to the rest of their small town of Dubh Linn.

The townsfolk were already gathering by the time the two vampires arrived in the town square. Amélie watched them with a cautious curiosity. At one point a boy her own age caught her eye. Amélie quickly looked away, adjusting her wedding band so that the light from nearby torches glinted on its surface.

Moira, ever vigilant, was watching her every move. “Samhain is the traditional turning point in the harvest season,” she explained as they walked, “and as such a transitional period it is also the time when the barrier between our world and the world of the spirits is at its thinnest.”

“Spirits? Do they come here?”

“They may. That is why humans appease them with food and drink and such. They say it’s a time of great faerie mischief as well, though I’ve yet to ever see one myself.”

Amélie trotted alongside Moira, whose long legs carried her swiftly and with great purpose. “Are the spirits that come good or evil?”

“Presumably a mixture of both, as with any kind of creature.”

“Do you think Gérard might come?”

“Perhaps. I would imagine he is awfully resentful after what you did to him. I doubt he’s found any sort of peace in the next life.”

Amélie’s step faltered. She had entertained thoughts of Gérard returning to her as a spirit a handful of times, but she hadn’t considered the possibility of him returning to her as a vengeful entity. But it only made sense. _He doesn’t know that I’m sorry. He still thinks that I killed him without remorse._

Moira greeted a few humans with her usual false civility. Amélie often wondered how such a permeating rottenness could be concealed so well. Moira’s act was perfect.

Her sire returned to her with some fabric folded over one arm and two masks in her hands. “Here.” She pushed one mask and cloak into Amélie’s grasp. “Don’t take them off until we’re back to my manor.”

Amélie looked the sad cloth up and down. The paint on the mask was vaguely horrifying, with black rings smeared around the eyeholes and purple lines running from the eyes down to the mouth. No one would recognize her in the shapeless brown cloak and hideous mask – especially not Gérard.

“I don’t want to wear this.”

Moira’s eyes narrowed. “You have to.”

“Why? If I do then G-“

Moira’s razor-sharp claws seized her wrist, chewing into her flesh until Amélie whimpered. “You are _not_ getting us exposed to any humans while we’re here. And the entire purpose of the guise is so the spirits won’t be able to follow you home. I’ll not have you bringing them with you.” With that she knocked Amélie away. “Stupid girl.”

Rather than escalate the situation any further Amélie resigned herself to donning the guise. There was no hole at the mouth of Amélie’s mask – not a problem since she didn’t need to breathe anyway, but it rendered coherent speech all but impossible. A quick glance over at her sire revealed that Moira’s mask did possess an opening at the mouth. _Subtle._

Moira busied herself mingling with the townsfolk, leaving Amélie alone in a sea of strangers. Everyone was quite loud to her sensitive vampire ears, and in their ugly masks and shapeless clothing it was a little unsettling. For the umpteenth time in the last few months she thought instinctively of calling for Gérard. For the umpteenth time her heart was seized by the re-realization that he would never again be by her side to answer her call.

She was still adjusting to the reality that she and Gérard would not spend the rest of their lives together. He was all she had ever known. Some of her earliest memories were of the two of them playing together as children, introduced by their eager parents. They had gotten along right from the start, with Amélie establishing toy-choice dominance and sweet little Gérard perfectly content to accept her rejects. She could still remember the conversation her mother had had with her as a girl of just seven years old, when she’d told her daughter that her long-time friend and playmate was destined to eventually become her husband. At the time she had not fully comprehended all that such a thing entailed. But as she grew older she began to realize that, in a world where most of the girls she knew were being sold off to wealthy foreign noblemen twice their age, the ability to marry her closest friend was a blessing.

She lowered her head as she shuffled through the crowd. _We had the world at our fingertips._ All the little moments still played through her head every day. Waking up every morning to his sleepy smile as he kissed her cheeks and she complained about his morning breath. Exchanging grandiose ideas of the ways they could spend their families’ ridiculous fortunes. Their awkward attempts at lovemaking that had yet to come to any sort of fruition because, frankly, they were both terrible at it.

Gérard had been excited by the prospect of having a child. Amélie herself had not been wild about the idea, but Gérard’s enthusiasm was highly contagious, and she’d found it rubbing off on her bit by bit.

When Moira first took her in Amélie had informed her there was a possibility she may be pregnant. Moira had laughed in her face before telling her that vampiresses could not carry children, and that whatever may have been growing inside of her was long dead by then.

Mademoiselle O’Deorain seemed to have no interest in taking a husband or having children. Even Amélie she regarded primarily with disdain, frequently reminding the girl that her existence in Moira’s life was little more than a burden. The only reason she apparently even kept her around was to assist with her more dangerous alchemical experiments.

Amélie was startled out of her thoughts by a tap on the shoulder. Turning she found, of course, a human in full disguise. Their mask was painted with a rainbow of different dyes, hardly frightening but certainly visually interesting. They had a small build, but not quite child-like.

They said something to her in Gaelige. The voice was feminine, matching the person’s scent. A female human. “I don’t speak much Gaelige,” Amélie said in English. “Sorry.”

The girl stared at her. Amélie realized her words were probably unclear through the mask.

“I said”–she lifted her mask just a hair–“I don’t speak Gaelige. I’m sorry.”

“Oh.” The girl pointed a gloved hand at her face. “I said I like your mask. Scary.”

“Thank you.” Amélie drew her cloak tighter around herself and attempted to end their interaction. Apparently not content with that, the girl pursued her. “So where are you from? Your accent is weird.”

Amélie did not turn around. “France.”

“Ohh. I’ve never been to France. Is it nice there?”

“Why are you talking to me?” Amélie stopped abruptly. The girl crashed into her back.

“This is a time to socialize,” the girl replied. “I just wanted to talk to you.”

“Why me? Why not anyone else?”

“I don’t know, why not?”

 _How irritating._ Amélie hadn’t come to socialize. She had originally come just for a chance to get out of Moira’s manor, but now that she knew what the holiday was about she had a second, and much more important, purpose.

“So why are you all the way here from France?” The girl fiddled with her cloak, slipping her hand inside of it but quickly pulling it back out when Amélie turned her way.

“Studying abroad,” she replied.

“Interesting. So is this your first Samhain?”

“Yes.” Amélie slowed a little. It had been so long since she’d socialized with someone who didn’t actively despise her. She knew she couldn’t pursue a friendship with a human, but tonight everyone was masked. No one knew she was any different from them.

“Got any big plans for the night, then?”

Amélie lifted her head. Moira was off in a crowd of human adults, chatting away. There wasn’t a single other person in this town that she knew or could interact with.

She turned halfway to face the girl. “I am here to talk to a spirit.”

The girl’s facial reaction was obscured, but her silence said everything. After several seconds she finally said, “Wow. I could never be that brave. Is it someone you know?”

“Yes.”

Amélie approached one of the massive bonfires lighting the night. Sparks jumped off of it and scattered all around in the dirt, leaving glittering smolders to light the path. Although she could feel the warmth of the flame, even smell its blistering heat, Amélie’s undead flesh remained cold.

“My mother says you’re not supposed to talk to the spirits,” the girl said. “She says they’re evil.”

“Is your mother a widow?”

“No?”

“Then she cannot possibly understand.”

The cool night air carried the flames of the bonfire toward Amélie. Amélie reached out and let the smoky air weave through her fingers. It coiled around her, clinging to her skin for a moment before it drifted off into the sky.

“You were married?” The girl circled around her curiously. “You sound like a kid.”

“I am a Countess. I was married at twelve.”

“Wow, really? I work on my family’s farm. No way I can afford to get married yet. Not unless I pick up a huge bounty or something…”

 _A commoner. I should have known._ Amélie was tempted to tell the girl to leave her alone, but found herself unable to do so. She was consumed by some emotion…loneliness, or rather the temporary alleviation of it. She hadn’t realized just how much loneliness was weighing on her heart until someone was actually reaching out to her.

She propped her mask up a little more, still playing with the fire in front of her. “I am widowed now. In my mourning I decided to leave my home and travel.”

“Is that how you met Lady O’Deorain?”

Amélie’s outstretched hand stiffened.

“Is it true what they say about her?” the girl’s tone began to shift. “That she communes with demons?”

“No. That is not true.”

“Really?” The girl’s once-friendly tone went entirely cold. “Because one time I saw a demon fly from the roof of her castle.”

The background noise of the festival fell away from her ears. The fire no longer felt boiling on her fingers. Amélie turned slowly toward the masked human girl.

The girl reached into her cloak. From within it she drew a long, sharpened dagger.

Amélie stood her ground, but her hands began to shake. “You’re a hunter.”

“Yeah. I am.”

The dagger sliced the air as it jutted toward Amélie’s chest. With vampiric reflexes, but a lack of experience using them, Amélie clumsily dodged the blow and stumbled, hitting the ground on her back. The girl was over her in an instant, bringing the dagger down again. With her mobility compromised Amélie could only reach into her own cloak, a desperate measure.

Seconds later the clang of steel striking steel rang out as Amélie blocked the blow with the flat side of Gérard’s treasured shortsword.

The girl scoffed. “Demon! I’ll kill you!”

Amélie kicked the girl off of her. The girl stumbled backward, granting Amélie a moment to get back on her feet. By then they had drawn the attention of several nearby humans. The mortals were beginning to cluster around them.

In the distance Amélie spotted Moira. Her sire was watching her, but remained entirely detached from the situation. _There is no point in calling for her. She isn’t going to help me._

A tickling sensation tugged just beneath her skin. Her vampiric form was trying to emerge. She fought it with everything she had.

The girl grabbed an unlit torch from a nearby pile and held it out to the bonfire. It ignited instantly. She then turned on her heel and swung it at Amélie. The flames caught the edge of her cloak and set fire to the dry cloth almost instantly. Amélie leaped back, beating the fire out with her hands. Her palms stung from the heat, and she saw through the holes in her mask that her fingernails were beginning to grow into claws. _No…not here…_

She hadn’t let It happen since Gérard. It would kill everyone here. _I must remain in control. I must…_

The girl dove on her again. This time she plunged the fire straight into Amélie’s ribcage. Amélie screeched. With her young claws she slashed at the girl, knocking her away.

The girl coughed and clutched at her chest, where Amélie must have wounded her. “They say all the monsters come out on Samhain. I guess that is true.”

“Leave me alone.” Amélie dragged herself away from the human, the burns in her chest trailing smoke from her rotten, undead flesh. “I am not a monster. I did not ask for this.”

The girl stumbled over to her, falling to her knees before Amélie. Amélie thought for a moment that she was giving up. Then the girl reached out and yanked Amélie’s mask off, throwing it far away.

The humans around her gasped as Amélie’s face was exposed to the night. At first she believed it to be her face they were gasping at – her teeth, her flesh, her horrid yellow eyes. But she quickly realized that was not the case.

No longer guised, Amélie began to notice all sorts of strange movements of the air around her. The flames did not dance with the wind, but coalesced into the forms of faces. The dirt kicked up into specters of dust. Shadows moved independently of their casters.

The human girl loomed over her, knife in hand again, but Amélie could no longer focus her attention on mortals.

Her eyes were beholding spirits.

A black, fluid energy welled up out of the ground around her. It began to coil gently around her arms, cold but oddly comforting. It flowed up over her chest as if she were sinking into ice water.

The blackness binding her arms was loose enough to let her rest her hands over her still heart. Tears dripped from the corners of her eyes, sinking into the dust beneath her. In the distance she saw something long and thin slide across her vision.

“Gérard? Are you here?”

Suddenly a pair of clawed hands grabbed her up and pulled her out of the murky blackness, right off the ground. Her eyes began to clear as she picked up the familiar scent of her sire. It was not easy to forget that odor of chemicals and brimstone.

“Demons! I knew it! I knew it!” The human girl ran after them, but it was pointless – Moira’s gigantic, spindly wings carried them off into the cloudy night sky. “I’ll – I’ll kill you!” The human girl, wounded and exhausted, eventually collapsed to her knees, panting. “You can’t run from me, monsters…I’ll…get you…someday…!”

Amélie said nothing as Moira carried her in a random direction away from their manor. Nothing needed to be said. She could feel her sire’s judgment on her loud and clear.

Sure enough, after several long, silent minutes Moira said “I really can’t take you anywhere, can I?”

She could have talked about the vampire hunter, but her thoughts were not on that. “I saw the spirits,” Amélie said.

Moira turned her face, still masked, down to Amélie. “You did?”

“I – I think so. It didn’t seem like human spirits, though…”

Moira’s claws unlatched from her. Amélie fell, becoming entangled in her own cloak as she flailed. Thankfully she managed to tear it off and discard it in time to right herself and open her own wings. The brilliant, swan-white limbs fanned out wide behind her, catching the night air to halt her fall.

Upon regaining her bearings Amélie confronted Moira at the same altitude. In the close moonlight the other woman looked even more viscerally unsettling. The dark blue sky and its clouds were soft and smooth – Moira was jagged and composed of angry colors, all oranges and reds.

“You’re going to lead the _Sluagh_ right to my doorstep!” Moira jabbed a clawed finger at her. “You foolish child! I can’t let you come back with me now!”

“What??” Amélie lost some altitude in her surprise. Quickly catching herself, she desperately flapped her wings to keep up with Moira. “You can’t just abandon me!”

“I most certainly can. I took you in out of the goodness of my heart, and you repay me by mingling with dark forces and letting them see your face to follow us home?”

“I didn’t let them – the vampire hunter pulled my mask off!”

“Vampire hunter…?” Moira grabbed her by the wrist again. “How do you manage to get into so much trouble in the span of a single evening?”

“Mademoiselle, please don’t abandon me.” Amélie swallowed her pride and knitted her fingers together. Begging was _not_ a favored pastime of Amélie’s, but there was no way she could survive on her own at this stage of her life. “I’m sorry.”

“Oh, you’ll _be_ sorry when the humans show up and try to burn us alive. And the spirits…they’re even worse…” Moira shook her head. “Amélie, what am I going to do with you?”

“Is there anything we can do? Could you concoct something to ward them off?” Appealing to Moira’s ego had proven effective in the past. This time was apparently no different, for Moira paused in thought.

“I’m sure I _could_ ,” she said. “But why should I waste my time? Kicking you out would be so much quicker.”

“But then you won’t have anyone to help you with your experiments.”

Upon a moment’s reflection, Moira lifted her mask for a brief moment. “You know how to sell yourself, don’t you?”

Folding her arms, Amélie nodded.

To her shock, Moira exhaled and said, “Fine. I suppose you’re worth keeping.” Her tone grew ominous. “But you must allow me to treat you for this spiritual exposure. It’s dangerous, and spirits are persistent.”

“And what of the vampire hunter, Mademoiselle?”

Moira scoffed. “You think humans have never tried to kill me before? One with such sloppy technique will never get far.”

They gained altitude until they were far too high for any humans to see them. Once disappearing into the clouds they changed course and headed back for Moira’s manor, awaiting them through its usual cloak of fog and darkness.

* * *

 

Moira spent the entire rest of the night down in her laboratory. Amélie loitered in the common room, looking around at all the bizarre decorations of the manor. Moira was fond of art, but not in the same vein as Amélie. Amélie was fond of portraits, of people at their most idealized. Moira seemed to prefer loud, abstract designs that jarred the eye to behold. They lined the stone hallways – one could not possibly escape from their garishness.

Amélie retrieved her quill, ink and paper pad from the common room table. With it she curled up in one of Moira’s oversized chairs and began to make a few idle ink strokes. They quickly formed into her own likeness, her face gaunt, her eyes full of fear. Self-portraits were the safest way to express herself, she’d found. They were not an idealized self, but a way to trap her vulnerability away in paper.

Once she had recreated herself her hand began to extend upon it, creating Moira beside her. The old vampiress’ claws wrapped around the ink-Amélie’s wrist, as Moira was so fond of doing in real life. Much as Amélie despised her in every other regard, Moira was actually quite enjoyable to draw. So many sharp, aggressive points and quill strokes building upon the long, towering lines that formed her limbs. Normally in her art she gave Moira a vicious facial expression, often with her fangs showing, but this time she decided to leave her face blank. _She did save me, I suppose._

Beneath Moira’s likeness Amélie inscribed the word _Mademoiselle._

With that sketch completed to satisfaction she moved to another piece of paper. This time she had no real ideas for what she wanted to draw, but her hand pushed onward anyway, creating lines and shapes she herself did not yet know the purpose of. She pushed heavily, far more so than usual, into the paper, making lines thick and dark. As she etched them she realized her arm had begun to feel cold. Her hand gripped the quill tight and began scribbling almost madly. The lines came together to form a beastly image, a hideous creature with numerous legs dripping venom-like ink from oversized fangs. Her hand aggressively banged eight dots onto the paper. Its empty, beady eyes.

Something brushed against her arm. Amélie saw nothing, but she could clearly feel it. As she looked the limb over to examine it something equally cold, like a rush of invisible ice water, felt as though it were pouring into both of her eyes. The sketch pad fell to the floor as Amélie leaped out of the chair and rubbed furiously at them.

Upon reopening her eyes she discovered something hovering in front of her – a small, pale shadow. It remained still for a moment, then reached an arm-like shape out to her. As it did so Amélie caught a glimpse of sparkling gold on its hand.

Her eyes fell to her own wedding band. It was a perfect match.

“Gérard…?” Her voice cracked. She stumbled toward the shade, so transfixed by it that that she stumbled over the common room table and fell to the floor. That did not deter her. She clambered to her feet and pursued the specter. “Gérard…!”

The shadow began to draw away from her. “No! Don’t go!”

Remaining just out of her reach, the specter began to sink into the floor. “Gérard! Gérard, wait!” Amélie threw herself on the ground and grabbed for the amorphous blackness. She was met with such shocking coldness that she immediately felt ill. She curled up and pulled away, nursing her now-shaking hand.

The shade seemed to study her for a moment, though it had no eyes with which to do so. Then it dissolved into the floor and disappeared.

“No! Gérard!” Amélie collapsed to the stone floor and pounded her fists in futile anguish. “My love…I’m so sorry…”

“What are you on about?” Moira’s voice was practically in her ear. As usual she had appeared completely silently behind Amélie. “What’s happened?”

Amélie curled up on her side and lay motionless on the floor.

“LaCroix, what’s happened?” Moira buried her claws into Amélie’s shoulder and flipped her over. “What did you do?”

Tears leaked down Amélie’s cheeks as she tried to think up something to say.

“Get up.” Moira tugged at her. “You’re too old for this.”

Amélie lifted her gaze, but when she did she beheld not her sire, but her own mother. The room around her had changed as well. She was back in her childhood bedroom.

Her mother reached down and scooped her up, as if she were still a child. “Hold still,” she said in a voice entirely unlike her mother’s. A vial of sweet-smelling liquid was pressed to her lips. “Drink this.”

The presence of her mother should have been shocking, and perhaps, since both of her parents believed she’d murdered the husband they’d chosen and then fled the country – which was, unfortunately, all true – she should have been unsettled by the appearance of her mother then. But instead she felt oddly peaceful. Comforted. When her mother tipped the vial to her lips she opened her mouth and obediently drank.

The liquid burned like acid. The moment it hit her throat Amélie coughed and began to retch. Her mother held firm to her. “Keep it down, LaCroix.”

Amélie gagged. The room around her started to blur, and then it was changing yet again. Her mother’s likeness melted away; instead it was, of course, Moira who held her. Normally Amélie would have been repulsed by such contact between the two of them, but she was already so sick from her sire’s concoction that she felt nothing else.

The world around her gradually returned to normal, but it seemed…duller, somehow, as if all vibrancy had been sucked out of her surroundings.

Moira set her down in the chair she’d been drawing in. It was clearly spoken with great hesitation, but she asked Amélie, “Are you all right?”

Amélie rubbed her head. “What…happened?”

“I told you the Sluagh would be after you. They’re vile souls that feed on human – and apparently vampire – emotion. They must have sensed you were a _wellspring_ of it.”

“So…where did they go?”

Moira tipped the now-empty vial in her direction. “I’ve been working on this for some time now, but you pushed me tonight to finally complete it.”

Amélie stared blankly at the glass. “Oh.”

“So? How do you feel?”

Her gaze drifted about the room. “I don’t see the spirits anymore.”

“That’s because, as I said, they feed on emotion. This solution of mine aims to suppress all of that nonsense.”

“Suppresses my emotions…?”

Moira nodded. “It isn’t perfected yet – it’ll take a few doses to really settle in, but once it does you should, in theory, be wholly immune to not only spiritual mischief and the foolhardy, impulsive decisions you so often make, but those nightmares of yours as well.”

 _No more nightmares…_ She hadn’t had a full, uninterrupted day’s sleep since her last night with Gérard, and it was beginning to take a toll on her physical and mental health. _No more guilt about what I did? About what a horrible wife and daughter I was?_

Amélie looked down at her sketchbook, full of drawings of everything she had gone through since the fateful evening she’d been pounced on by a group of hungry vampires.

“I spend most days wishing I was dead,” she said.

“I know.”

Amélie gazed up into the face of her sire. It didn’t feel intimidating anymore. In fact, it conjured no sort of reaction from her at all.

She blinked slowly, and then nodded. “Very well, Moira. Fix me.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! While technically a standalone, this oneshot's story does continue in my full-length fic "Pretty People Never Lie, Vampires Never Die". You can find it [here!](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11915130/chapters/26924937)


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